


The Door Outside (the Wolf's at the Gate)

by SlowMercury



Category: Sky High (2005), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Community: no_true_pair, Dreams, Gen, Gen Fic, Imprisonment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-16
Updated: 2015-02-16
Packaged: 2018-03-13 05:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 708
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3370079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SlowMercury/pseuds/SlowMercury
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The superpower dampening shield that surrounded the prison and inhibited Gwen's technopath abilities left her brain just crippled enough to know how stupid she’d become and how badly she’d failed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Door Outside (the Wolf's at the Gate)

**Author's Note:**

> It would probably help your understanding of this story to be mildly familiar with _Sandman_ and/or _Sky High_ , but it isn't essential. Basically, _Sandman_ 's Dream of the Endless is the anthropomorphic personification of storytelling. _Sky High_ 's Gwen Grayson is a captured, defeated supervillain with technology superpowers.

Gwen was dreaming. She knew it because she could think clearly, and she hadn’t had a clear, unimpeded thought in years. The superpower dampening shield that surrounded the prison and inhibited her technopath abilities left her brain just crippled enough to know how stupid she’d become and how badly she’d failed. She could only dimly remember how it had felt before, the brilliance of mathematics and the joy of electricity swirling together to make wonderful new creations. But now it was coming back—Gwen felt like herself again.

Gwen looked down and, yes, she was wearing her Royal Pain supersuit. _Really_ herself, then.

She was standing outside her cell in the hallway of the prison, all dingy industrial white walls and claustrophobic ceilings. She had a sudden feeling that if she could escape from the prison in her dream she’d be free in reality, too. It was utterly irrational, but Gwen believed it with the fervor of someone experiencing hope for the first time in far too long.

She walked briskly down the corridor, passing iron doors with square little windows that leaked maniac laughter and sobbing noises. She could feel eyes on her back, urging her to panic and flee. The hallway twisted and suddenly she stood in front of her own cell again. 

_Don’t run,_ her instincts insisted. _Don’t run, or you’ll attract their attention and they’ll catch you so that you can’t ever get back to the sun and then they’ll cut you up so bad you’ll never, ever, **ever** feel the atoms dance again._

Gwen turned and paced down a different hall. _When,_ she wondered, _had the prison turned into a maze?_ She heard something rasp in the corridor behind her, but there was nothing there when she turned.

She continued through the prison, unable now to keep herself from looking back occasionally. Gradually, the peep windows into the other cells changed from standard institutional rectangles to ovals, and then into even weirder shapes. Hands reached out to her, begging or grabbing, and Gwen knocked them aside with increasing fervor. She made the mistake of looking into a room only once; her own face drooled back at her from a tangle of choking, bleeding vines, and she realized with a start that she had returned to her own cell once again.

That time, Gwen was unable to stop herself from bolting. She could hear the thud of guards’ boots and jeering laughter echoing after her as she fled. The hands stretching out of the cells caught at her now and called out her location to the guards when she dodged them, fleeing faster and faster. Every time Gwen passed a light, it winked out behind her and she heard her shadow pursuers draw a little closer.

Finally, Gwen found a different kind of door: instead of a window showing a hellish prison chamber, there was a glowing red image of a bird on it. She threw herself at it, and the door swung open with a creak. 

**Greetings, dreamer,** said an enormous black wolf with galaxies in its eyes. It was blocking her exit, and its body was limned in moonlight.

“Hi,” Gwen croaked. She licked her lips. “Could you move aside, please?” She tried to control it, but her voice wavered from a combination of terror and rage. To be _so close_ to escaping...

The wolf regarded her expressionlessly, judging her without mercy. She had a sudden image of him swatting her with a paw for her temerity, much like a bored housewife would crush a fly.

 _Please,_ Gwen thought desperately. _Please, even that is better than going back._

 **You are a fool, Gwen Grayson, Royal Pain,** the wolf rumbled. **But you are also one of mine, and I know what it is to be caged and diminished. You may pass.**

The wolf did not so much as twitch, but a space opened where before there had been none. Electrons sang along Gwen’s nerves and numbers danced across the surface of her mind with jubilant ease. She moved forward, scraping past the wolf’s forefeet with an odd metallic hissing sound. In the waking world, the back-up generator failed and took the power dampening field with it. 

Gwen Grayson stepped, blinking, out into freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2009 for the [no_true_pair community](http://asylums.insanejournal.com/no_true_pair/).


End file.
